Becoming, by Michelle Obama, is one of the best books I've read in a very long time. For most if not all of Barack Obama's eight years as President, to me Michelle was always the strong woman standing behind him smiling with their two daughters and dogs. Or, she was the hilarious center of the Let's Move! campaigns many viral videos.
Even though I knew she was incredibly intelligent and knew she was by any account a woman of great stature, I didn't really know much about the events that had shaped her life or about the personal and professional sacrifices she had made on the behalf of her husband and family.
Becoming was, in a lot of ways, a revealing of who this woman was in her entirety. Rather than the spotlight that had always been focused on her husband casting light on an adjacent Michelle, here the spotlight is firmly cast upon her alone, and she is the one directing that spotlight's brightness and focus.
Reading about what it was like being raised in Chicago, about the value system her parents had instilled within her, and about the sacrifices they had made in order to better the lives of her brother and her was deeply moving. I found myself admiring a great deal her father's quiet pride and determinant work ethic.
Becoming is laid out in such a fashion as to make it easy in later chapters to draw direct lines between Michelle's ideas about family structure and values and those that her parents had quietly built their own lives around.
Not that I didn't know this already, but I walked away from this book with great clarity around the fact that Michelle Obama is a woman that could have done almost anything she set her mind to in a professional sense. But she cast aside those ambitions, and did so knowing that the orderly and quiet family life she sought would be forever forgone, in order to support and lift up her husband.
I was further impressed to have learned of the great lengths she went to while living in the White House to teach both of her daughters that the world does not revolve around any one man, despite having to raise them within an environment where, in the case of their father, their world did indeed revolve around him. A common thread throughout the many causes she celebrated and worked on was the empowerment of young people, and women especially to understand their place in the world as equals among men.
I enjoyed tremendously learning about the path Michelle took through life that led her to Barack, the White House, and beyond. I also deeply enjoyed learning about how she placed her family continually and always above everything else, herself included.
Even though I knew she was incredibly intelligent and knew she was by any account a woman of great stature, I didn't really know much about the events that had shaped her life or about the personal and professional sacrifices she had made on the behalf of her husband and family.
The cover of Becoming.
Reading about what it was like being raised in Chicago, about the value system her parents had instilled within her, and about the sacrifices they had made in order to better the lives of her brother and her was deeply moving. I found myself admiring a great deal her father's quiet pride and determinant work ethic.
Becoming is laid out in such a fashion as to make it easy in later chapters to draw direct lines between Michelle's ideas about family structure and values and those that her parents had quietly built their own lives around.
Not that I didn't know this already, but I walked away from this book with great clarity around the fact that Michelle Obama is a woman that could have done almost anything she set her mind to in a professional sense. But she cast aside those ambitions, and did so knowing that the orderly and quiet family life she sought would be forever forgone, in order to support and lift up her husband.
I was further impressed to have learned of the great lengths she went to while living in the White House to teach both of her daughters that the world does not revolve around any one man, despite having to raise them within an environment where, in the case of their father, their world did indeed revolve around him. A common thread throughout the many causes she celebrated and worked on was the empowerment of young people, and women especially to understand their place in the world as equals among men.
I enjoyed tremendously learning about the path Michelle took through life that led her to Barack, the White House, and beyond. I also deeply enjoyed learning about how she placed her family continually and always above everything else, herself included.